I’ve always wanted a panoramic tripod head to do real estate photography. A stitched panorama will have much less lens distortion than a single image shot with a very wide-angle lens.
High-quality panoramic heads are priced from about $400 to $900 and they have many features. But I only need to occasionally shoot a horizontal row of photos which can be stitched together.
Before buying an expensive panoramic head, I bought a 240mm nodal rail with a sliding camera mount for $35. There are shorter rails but a longer nodal rail can work with a wider range of lenses.
It turned out that this cheap, little attachment works perfectly for what I wanted to do. Did I mention it was cheap?
A $35 nodal rail purchased from Amazon. This 240mm rail is sold under a few different brand names and there are other nodal rails as low as $20. A nodal rail is easy to carry in a camera bag or even a coat pocket.
